Roneat
Roneat are a group of trough xylophones in Cambodia , whose idiophonic chime bars are made of wood or bamboo, and metallophones with chime bars made of bronze .
The name is derived from roneap, "bamboo strips". The general design is a boat-shaped, slightly upwardly curved sound box made of wood. At its ends the sound bars (apart from the metal plates) are suspended in a row on strings and stretch like a suspension bridge over the open-topped body without touching it. The roneat is placed on the floor and played by the seated musician with two mallets with a disc-shaped head. Harder mallets are used for playing outdoors and softer mallets for indoors. The related instruments in classical Thai and Laotian music are called ranat ek, in Myanmar pattala and are derived from the Javanese xylophones gambang, sarun or gender of the gamelan orchestra. All roneat are played in the popular classical Mohori ensemble and in the piphat ensemble for the royal ceremonial court music. The wooden panels provide a short, dry tone that does not need to be muffled.
The roneat ek ("first, leading xylophone"), also roneat rut ("running xylophone"), is the most widely used instrument of these xylophones. Its 21 high-pitched bars are made of bamboo ( Bambusa ) or hardwood with a length between 30 and 39 cm and a width of up to 7 cm. The resonance box is 115 cm long and has small feet away from the floor. The Roneat ek to loud imagination take over the main melodic line of the musicians in the orchestra, in fact, it usually plays variations of the melody in a straight line from the oboe sralay or the vocal runs.
The roneat thung, also called roneat thom (“large xylophone”) is slightly larger (125 cm long), it has 16 sound bars, which are the lowest of all these xylophones. The highest notes of both instruments are an octave apart. The bars are 38 to 47 cm long. The roneat thung plays further embellishments between the notes of the musical theme . Only soft mallet discs are used.
The roneat dek has 21 high pitched bronze chime bars, which because of their weight do not hang on strings, but lie directly on the rectangular wooden box with a soft layer of cloth. The mallet discs are made of wood or buffalo skin.
The roneat lek described in the 19th century had 17 iron plates over the same flat box. It corresponded to the rare Thai ranat lek, also called ranat ek lek .
literature
- Sam-Ang Sam: The Khmer People of Cambodia. In: Terry E. Miller and Sean Williams: The Garland handbook of Southeast Asian music. Routledge, 2008, pp. 89-91
- Sam-Ang Sam: Musical Instruments of Cambodia. National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka 2002